I had not realized that the Senate passed the Defense Department authorization yesterday until the Standard commented on it this morning. The spending bill passed overwhelmingly, 92-3, with only Robert Byrd, Tom Coburn, and Russ Feingold in opposition. Tellingly, the Democrats running for office from the Senate all managed to miss the vote -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chrsi Dodd, and Joe Biden.

Democrats had threatened to hold up the Defense appropriation until George Bush bent to their will on Iraq. Harry Reid had petulantly taken the bill off the table in July, attempting to hold it to the last minute in order to pressure Republicans to change course in Iraq. Instead, as the success of the surge became more and more apparent, Reid found the ground falling out from beneath him.

Oddly, no major newspaper on my feed list bothered to report this development. The AP did generate a story for use by its client newspapers, but apparently had few takers:

The bill included around 128 billion dollars for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate.

The legislation passed by 92 votes to three after Democrats lost several attempts to dictate US troop levels in Iraq.

Roll Call reports that the House will take up supplemental funding bills for the Iraq deployment, but that none of them call for any withdrawals. Congressional Quarterly reports that Nancy Pelosi has advised against working on withdrawal timetables until early next year, claiming that there will be more "consensus" on withdrawal by January or early February.

This begs the question: if a party collapses in the weeds, will its extremists acknowledge that it didn't make a peep?

» National Defense Authorization Bill vs. Rush Limbaugh from J's Cafe Nette
The National Defense Authorization Act passed the Senate yesterday but with no assistance from the front runners in the Presidential race on the Democratic Side.
I had not realized that the Senate passed the Defense Department authorization yesterday u... [Read More]

» Defense Bill Passes: Dems are Paper Tigers from frankhagan.com
Remember all the noise from the Dems, that they would hold up the appropriations bill to force the Administration to establish a time-table for withdrawal, or as Al Qaeda puts it, our surrender?
It passed the Senate Monday 92 - 3, and with only 3 dis... [Read More]

» Supporting the Troops, Part II from InMuscatine
It is very curious how the major Democrats running for President (Billary, Biden, Obama, Dodd) didn’t have time to vote for supporting our troops, yet had time to condemn Limbaugh.
Why, it’s almost like they had a vested interest in the def... [Read More]

Ed stopped acknowledging basic realities about Iraq years ago. Now he can't even make sense of the domestic politics around the war.

In his mind those who've objected to the endless continuation of unrestricted war funding are partisan "extremists." This on the same day that a poll shows that these so-called extremists speak for only 69% of the public.

Where you're as far out on the fringe as Ed now is, I guess the rest of the world starts to look pretty extreme.

And, no, Ed, it's not news, to antiwar bloggers or anyone else who reads the papers, that Reid isn't still trying to attach withdrawal amendments to funding bills. We've been over this many times now. Everyone who's been watching knows that these amended bills need a filibuster-proof majority to pass and a veto-proof majority to become law.

In Ed's fantasy world, antiwar activists would now turn against Reid. But in reality, anyone who cares enough about the war to pay attention to the Senate recognizes perfectly well that the Democrats by themselves don't have the necessary votes. Activists and others know who's responsible for keeping these measures from passing.

The Republicans who held the balance of power on these votes have made their decision. The vast majority of the public has reached its own conclusion. Down the line, those Republicans who have defied their own constituents will be held accountable for their votes. Then we'll see which party really does collapse in the weeds -- and whose flacks and diehard supporters really are "extremists."

So, in other words, nandrews, the dems, despite their promises to their lunatic base AND despite being in the majority in Congress AND despite the fact that a solid majority of the country (allegedly) wants us out of Iraq ASAP...

Couldn't deliver.

And you blame REPUBLICANS for this???

Ya gotta wonder how it feels to be Dingy Harry or SanFran Nan: leaders of their houses of Congress, yet powerless in the face of a handful of Republicans. If I wasn't so busy laughing (or sneering), I'd almost feel sorry for them.

With their cute, li'l poison-pill Hate Crimes amendment, the dems probably think that they're setting up President Bush to "vote for the war before he votes against it." However, I don't imagine that the amendment will survive conference.

In the mean time, we'll be hearing how they voted overwhelmingly for a Hate Crimes bill with a defense appropriation amendment attached. Even so, some loud-mouth gay rights group is angry because the bill took out special extra protecton for trans-gender folks.

"By a 2 to 1 margin, those who see little accomplishment in Congress's first nine months blame the inaction on Bush and the GOP more than they do the majority Democrats. Fifty-one percent place primary fault with the president and congressional Republicans, and 25 percent on the Democrats. Among independents, 43 percent blame Republicans, 23 percent Democrats and nearly three in 10 blame both sides equally."

Bush vetoed one conditional funding bill. Senate Republicans filibustered other amendments. If they're not to blame for what they did, then who is?

Both Ed and docjim seem to imagine that just because most people are dissatisfied with the outcome, they'll somehow blame it on Harry Reid. They're assuming that most people are too stupid or inattentive to grasp what happened.

Well, docjim505, the polling data doesn't say much for your grasp of reality. Maybe you're keeping yourself a bit too busy with all the laughing and sneering.

Currently, the "military" bill contains provisions for gays to be "accepted." Sort'a like letting Wide-Stance Larry remain in the senate, because the president votes "for" this. Instead, of against it.

As to the few leftoids who come here, to comment. I'd trust a bunch of gypsy predictions FIRST. (And, I'm not apt to do that. At all.)

I also don't think the congress critters are standing on all that much credibility with the public.

And, Bush is LEAVING OFFICE!

It also seems, where's there's a dirth of news; where, for instance, NOTHING is coming out of Irak, these days;

Well, that has to do with Bush's SUCCESSES.

Lincoln, in his day, did not get all that much credit, either.

Plus, to this day, people don't know the benefits that came to America when President Polk was in office.

One good way to avoid predictions; is just to use the past. And, see what history says.

Heck, if Hillary got elected? I think MOST STATES would find a good reason to believe the election was stolen. Because? Well, when Nixon got elected in 1968, Pauline Kael, who was writing for the New Yorker, at the time, declared: But, but, but ... none of my friends voted for him."

If Hillary got it? The scale of that particular sound would be astronomical. And, you bet; we'd again watch a presidency collapsing around the antics of the media. And, the gall of the congress critters.

And, that's the best case scenario I can think up.

So, in my book, there are no predictions; until we find out where the pork got stuffed. And, "what's this business homosexuality, where Congress tells the Joint Chiefs what they can do with people who are just plain offended?"

Hmm? Larry Craig ain't the only one ... making with the hand signals.

More daylight is needed, here. We're still inside the "dark of night."

Are the Bonkeys worried? You wouldn't be in their shoes?

Hey! I'd bet Bubba ain't buying his "first lady" wardrobe! If Hillary doesn't naturally fall off the nomination stage? Give Bubba a chance to kick his wife in the arse. Bubba is way too full of himself to EVER WANT Hillary to be someone with his old job title! Heck, he wasn't even nice to Monica; after Monica saved his presidential skin!

Talk of ingratitude.

Expect it to be re-played.

While George Soros, and all other suckers? Bubba's gonna laugh and shake their hands. He's a pro. He loves the money!

""By a 2 to 1 margin, those who see little accomplishment in Congress's first nine months blame the inaction on Bush and the GOP more than they do the majority Democrats. Fifty-one percent place primary fault with the president and congressional Republicans, and 25 percent on the Democrats. Among independents, 43 percent blame Republicans, 23 percent Democrats and nearly three in 10 blame both sides equally."

Interesting numbers. I guess the public isn't as stupid as the Repubolicans hoped.

Plus, you know darn well that people can't stand Congress as a 'thing', a 'group' an 'entity'...but ask them to rate their individual congresscritters and they love 'em. It's always someone else's congressperson that's the the problem, you see.

How can they not realize their efforts to end the war has just dragged it out further?

It's not the fault of anyone but Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld that this war has been the most disastrous war effort in US history. If the war had been properly executed and managed, instead of being done through half measures and on the cheap, Iraq would have turned out far differently.

Although we love to pretend that Democrats all support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, in reality very few party leaders believe that there's a quit exit option.

What I think is more newsworthy is that the military spending was approved without any attempt to pay for it. This is the only war in US history that hasn't been accompanied by a tax increase to cover the costs. Instead, we continue down the dangerous road of accumulating a massive budget deficit, clinging to the bizarre right-wing doctrince that deficits are irrelevant.

As Greenspan recently pointed out, Cheney is wrong. The US budget defficit is a serious problem. Printing out all these dollars to fund the war, pay interest obligations on existing debt, and fund new domestic expenditures is starting to look like a disaster in the making.

Honestly, Captain, a smart gentleman such as yourself should know that begging the question does not mean to raise the question, but rather it means the assumption of the argument is true without proving that it's true.

Now I know what the talk about the sur tax is all about. Didn't we have this with the Viet Nam war?

The military spending was approved with a plan to pay for it. A sur tax! and next is a draft!

the problem with the Democrates is they speak with a forked tongue. They say one think but their actions are always the opposite of what they say.

They never have been against this war. They supported it in the beginning, They talk about pulling out, but go right on supporting it. Now it is the sur tax, and next the draft. Be prepared to be in Iraq for a very long time.

Look at how long we have had troops in Japan, Germany, and Korea?

Their followers must be wearing some kind of rose colored glasses.

I see this vision in my mind. I see all the democratic senators and congressmen smiling and waving to their contituants with grease guns in hand, and I see all their constiuants coming up in a line to get greased.

bayam: It's not the fault of anyone but Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld that this war has been the most disastrous war effort in US history.

Really? We've lost less than 4000 men in about four years. President Lincoln lost that many men in an hour or two SEVERAL TIMES during the Civil War. Ditto President Wilson during World War I and President Roosevelt during World War II. If one wanted to be uncharitable, he could say that President Lincoln's war cost hundreds of thousands of dead and its only result was a ten-year occupation of the South, a nation that remained fractured for decades afterward, and racial scars that fester to this day. President Wilson wasted around 180,000 men in about 18 months of war, then so botched the peace that an even more deadly war broke out a couple of decades later. President Roosevelt was so utterly careless that he ignored the obvious threat posed by Hitler and the Japanese military clique, then let our fleet get destroyed (maybe the conspiracy theorists were right and he did it deliberately), then wasted 450,000 men only to hand half of Europe and China over to the communists when the war was over. Oh, and did I mention the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians he killed in firebombings, not to mention the use of the A-bombs? How about the civil rights of American citizens he trampled?

Natch, I don't take this view myself, but it makes about as much sense as what idiot liberals say about "Bush's war" in Iraq.

Here's a tip, kids: the war ain't over yet. I know that you're doing everything you can to make damned sure that we lose, but we haven't lost yet. History will judge whether Bush was a fool or a man of vision.

O' course, given that most historians are libs who probably believe that 9-11 was an inside job, Bush hasn't got a chance in the history books...

bayam: If the war had been properly executed and managed, instead of being done through half measures and on the cheap, Iraq would have turned out far differently.

Wait; I thought libs treated it as a matter of faith that Iraq is hopeless no matter what we do. They also bitch that we're spending too much money. Not enough boots on the ground... Too many troops... Do you guys actually have ANY hard position beyond "Quagmire!" and "It's all Bush's fault!"(TM)? One would almost think that libs shop for reasons to complain about in an effort to politicize the war for their own gain! /sarcasm

bayam: Although we love to pretend that Democrats all support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, in reality very few party leaders believe that there's a quit [sic] exit option.

This is a laughable assertion. Before the evidence began to mount that the surge was doing some good, dems were tripping over themselves to pressure Bush to get out ASAP. Hell, the dems in Congress are continuing that old song even now. Cut 'n' run has been bread and butter for the dems for the past three years; only VERY recently have the Hilldabeast, the Dope, and Silky Pony started hedging their bets. Eventually, they'll have to tell Dingy Harry, SanFran Nan, al-Murtha, Turban Durbin, et al, to ix-nay the alk-tay about -ithdrawal-way... until AFTER the election.

bayam: What I think is more newsworthy is that the military spending was approved without any attempt to pay for it. This is the only war in US history that hasn't been accompanied by a tax increase to cover the costs. Instead, we continue down the dangerous road of accumulating a massive budget deficit, clinging to the bizarre right-wing doctrince that deficits are irrelevant.

If you're expecting a defense of Bush's fiscal policies from me, try somebody else. However, I would like to note that:

(1) Revenues to the treasury are at an all-time high, and;

(2) What exactly has the Congress done to try to tighten the belt elsewhere? I would wager that this is also the first war we've ever fought in which non-defense federal spending wasn't curtailed. How much money did Congress waste in earmarks on the transporation bill alone last year?

You DO realize that Congress has the power of the purse, don't you?

bayam: As Greenspan recently pointed out, Cheney is wrong. The US budget defficit is a serious problem. Printing out all these dollars to fund the war, pay interest obligations on existing debt, and fund new domestic expenditures is starting to look like a disaster in the making.

So, will you be joining us conservatives in demanding an end to runaway domestic spending? How about a balanced budget? Opposition to federalized health care? No?

Why am I not surprised...

And didn't you just get finished bitching that BUSH tried to fight the war on the cheap???

By a 2 to 1 margin, those who see little accomplishment in Congress's first nine months blame the inaction on Bush and the GOP more than they do the majority Democrats.

Interesting. Democrats are now trying to pretend that they are not actually in power. For their "reliable" sourse to back up this wacko claim they quote a Washington Post article. Perhaps Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was too busy.

The Kool-Aid Krowd must have had a huge snootful today in order to be able to swallow one up. Please keep it up - a one-way ticket back to the minority awaits you next November if you do.

The Democrats have a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate. All funding bills arise in the House. Without funding, our military efforts stop cold. Without a majority vote, bills don't pass.

And of course, the Democrats have promised their base that they'll pull our military out of Iraq.

Ed points out that the Democrats overwhelmingly have voted for a military funding bill. After responding that most Americans want us out of Iraq, Nandrews then says the Democrats now can't cut off funding for Iraq, and must vote for bills funding our military, because the President might veto the funding?

The President can't veto something that's never presented to him, because it never has been enacted.

I'd say the Democrat base has been sold out by their own. The only debate here is whether "gobbledygook", "mumbo-jumbo", "blather", or perhaps, "ahumina, humina, humina," are the better characterizations of what Nandrews is saying.

If Nandrews is correct about the sentiments of the American people, the Democrats themselves face political peril for their votes in support of the Iraq War.

The current size of IRS revenues isn't relevant, that's a distraction. The balance of federal income to spending is what matters.

I think you'd find that most Americans are willing to pay higher taxes to support the war. But you need leaders brave enough to ask people to make a sacrifice. I never supported Bush's wild spending habits, esp. the new prescription drug giveaway, although Bush is supposedly a conservative himself.

Returning to the notion that you can always solve budgetary challenges- such as funding a war- by cutting back on spending elsewhere in the budget is a delusion. Earmark spending isn't even close to what's been spent on Iraq. What's clear is that you can't cut taxes and start a major war without creating a massive deficit that poses a real future threat to economic prosperity.

Our deficit is so massive that further tax cuts are practically out of the question, at least according to Greenspan and most economists. If the US housing slump does drag the economy into a recession- or if another terrorist attack occurs- the government will have little room to lower taxes without a major backlash from Wall Street and the currency markets. It's not going to be pretty.

docjim505:
I know that you're doing everything you can to make damned sure that we lose, but we haven't lost yet.

Is that the best you got, doc? Trotting out the worn out "liberals a)hate the troops b)want us to lose." Why don't you just label 70% of the American public as traitors and cut-and-runners and be done with it?

Besides, it's hard to win a war that you have no moral right to win. As the Downing Street memos, and last week's revelations have shown us, Iraq was purely a war of choice. No longer even a mistake, but a choice. 1 million dead, $1T pissed away (both depending on who's counting) to attack a country that did not present any serious threat. I'd invite you to ponder those numbers, but I'd be wasting my time.

The Dems: not spineless, not pathetic, that's not it at all. On Board, Signed Up, Part of the Plan/Problem is more like it. Anyone who talks about the Power of the Radical Left in today's world is truly without a clue.

First of all, no one (no one who matters, anyway) has been able to tell me, lo these 6 years, just what exactly a "win" would look like. Plus...... it's hard to imagine anyone walking away from the Cradle of Civiliztion, now pounded into dust, and saying "We won!"

I want us out. Right now. The canard that "it will be worse if we leave" is hard to swallow.

monty, I'm curious to pick your brain a bit about when you WOULD whole-heartedly support military action by U.S. troops. I hear a lot of Democrats using the phrase you stated above yet I have yet to hear one discuss their own parameters for justified action. So, if you would be so kind, look over the following list and simply acknowledge with a Yes or No whether that event would justify military action by the U.S.:

1. Iran bombs Israel with nuclear missiles

2. Al Qaeda and the Taliban take over Pakistan

3. Iranian missiles take out a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian gulf

4. Iran concedes that they have fully operational nuclear missiles

5. 66 Americans are kidnapped and held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Turkey

6. Syria is revealed to have nuclear weapons

7. Syria invades Lebanon and overthrows the government there

8. After American withdrawl in Iraq, Al Qaeda overthrows the Iraqi government and sets up a terrorist state

9. New York City is hit with a dirty bomb, killing 5,000 people and the terrorists responsible were Al Qaeda in Iraq (after U.S. withdrawl)

10. The U.S. embassy is destroyed by Hezbollah missiles fired from Lebanon.

It's not the fault of anyone but Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld that this war has been the most disastrous war effort in US history. If the war had been properly executed and managed, instead of being done through half measures and on the cheap, Iraq would have turned out far differently.
And yet despite the worst run wars ever, this is one of the lowest casualties from most wars we've fought. SO then what determines wether it was disastrous. As disastrous as Vietnam? As disastrous as WWII? What defines disastrous? The casualty rate? (Low), the number of mistakes? Check back into some older wars to see all the mistakes that were comitted,how bloody the war is?What?
Give us the war that was fought the right way that didn't have the disastrous mistakes that was properly executed. Name us the war.

3. Iranian missiles take out a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian gulf Yes

4. Iran concedes that they have fully operational nuclear missiles No

5. 66 Americans are kidnapped and held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Turkey Yes, as long we know who we're attacking. Thrashing about not allowed

6. Syria is revealed to have nuclear weapons No

7. Syria invades Lebanon and overthrows the government there No

8. After American withdrawl in Iraq, Al Qaeda overthrows the Iraqi government and sets up a terrorist state No

9. New York City is hit with a dirty bomb, killing 5,000 people and the terrorists responsible were Al Qaeda in Iraq (after U.S. withdrawl) Yes, as long we know who we're attacking. Thrashing about not allowed

10. The U.S. embassy is destroyed by Hezbollah missiles fired from Lebanon. Yes

While we're engaging in hypotheticals: if we gave Barry Goldwater the same quiz, would his answers be mostly the same? I think so. If we gave it to Pat Buchanan today? Probably. But, you say, "9/11 changed everything". Not really. History tells me that we're not all that exceptional.

And yet despite the worst run wars ever, this is one of the lowest casualties from most wars we've fought. SO then what determines wether it was disastrous.

As I said above: 1 million civilian Iraqis dead, $1T spent, and what is accomplished?. Those 1 million people, BTW, are real people, with families, homes, etc. It's as if I drove into Birmingham, Alabama, just down the road, and Everyone. Was. Dead.

$1T that could have taken us a long ways towards being independent of imported oil.

As I said above: 1 million civilian Iraqis dead, $1T spent, and what is accomplished?

Wrong, the war has saved Iraqis.

The choice was not between Iraq under occupation and a peaceful Iraq; the latter never existed. To assess the net number of deaths resulting from the decision to invade Iraq, we must also weigh the cost of inaction: the number of deaths the Hussein regime would have perpetrated in our absence. A conservative estimate is Saddam was responsible for some 2 million deaths during his warmongering reign (two invasions of neighbors, two major civil wars, two wars caused by the regime's intranisgence in the face of the international community's demands) which works out to about 7,000 per month – far below the death toll in any month of the war and occupation.

Extrapolating from the regime's prior behavior, it would be more accurate to say we have saved 1 to 5 percent of the Iraq population – and granted the rest some semblance of free press, free expression, freedom to own things like cars, generators, and cell phones, and (lest we forget this sacred right) free elections. And we would be remiss not to consider the end of the crippling sanctions the UN claimed killed 500,000 Iraqis, imposed because of the regime's behavior.

A conservative estimate is Saddam was responsible for some 2 million deaths during his warmongering reign (two invasions of neighbors, two major civil wars, two wars caused by the regime's intranisgence in the face of the international community's demands) which works out to about 7,000 per month – far below the death toll in any month of the war and occupation.

Excuse me? The "conservative estimate" used to be 600,000 to 1,000,000 until we blew past that number. I see the goalposts have moved again. Save me your crocodile tears: if our oil wasn't under their sand, no one would give a rat's ass.

The "conservative estimate" used to be 600,000 to 1,000,000 until we blew past that number.

You don't know what you're talking about. The estimates for his war with Iran alone exceed that number. And your "1 million dead" in the current occupation is out of whole cloth; even the discredited Lancet excess deaths number doesn't approach that.

Save me your crocodile tears: if our oil wasn't under their sand, no one would give a rat's ass

Without that oil, Saddam could never have amassed those armies and fought those wars or developed those WMD, so it wouldn't be an issue, but otherwise I'm not sure why it would matter to me. I'm not getting any of the money derived from pumping oil at $5/barrel and selling it for $80.

But it's nice that those profits are going to help the Iraqi people now, instead of being used for palaces, WMD, and Saddam's war/repression machine.

Oh, please. Look at the claim being made by the commentator, in the link you provide. He says "the poll is heavily skewed toward Democrats," because respondents identified themselves this way:

Democrat, 33 percent
Republican, 24 percent

And with the "leanings" of self-identified "independents" included, the sampling looks like this:

NET LEANED PARTY
Democrat, 50 percent
Republican, 38 percent

Well, sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but this poll isn't "heavily skewed toward Democrats." It fairly approximates the current breakdown of partisan self-identification among the public. That's what a poll is supposed to do.

Yes, Democrats now have a lead of several points in overall nationwide party ID. And independents are currently leaning net Democratic. Anyone who isn't aware of these trends hasn't read or heard anything about polls these last couple years. Look at Rasmussen or any other poll -- it may not show a 9-point gap, but it will be fairly close. Here's an easier example: remember the 2006 elections?

Mwalimu Daudi says,

... it is not the fact that the MSM tells lies constantly. It is the fact that they tell clumsy, stupid, easy-to-disprove lies constantly that irritates me.

Yeah, right. Maybe the Washington Post does tell lies that are stupid and easy to disprove. But it doesn't exactly look as though you've got what it takes.

More than one million deaths were already being suggested by anti-war campaigners, but such high counts have consistently been rejected by US and UK officials. The estimates, extrapolated from a sample of 1,461 adults around the country, were collected by a British polling agency, ORB, which asked a random selection of Iraqis how many people living in their household had died as a result of the violence rather than from natural causes.

By that method, I can prove a billion people were at Woodstock, and the average penis size is 12 inches.

"First of all, no one (no one who matters, anyway) has been able to tell me, lo these 6 years, just what exactly a "win" would look like."

Well I'm sure this guy doesn't fare well on your People-that-matter-o-meter, but he's told you about million times.

The success of a free Iraq is critical to the security of the United States. A free Iraq will deny al Qaeda a safe haven. A free Iraq will counter the destructive ambitions of Iran. A free Iraq will marginalize extremists, unleash the talent of its people, and be an anchor of stability in the region. A free Iraq will set an example for people across the Middle East. A free Iraq will be our partner in the fight against terror -- and that will make us safer here at home.

So, there's what a win looks like. Close your eyes and imagine Dennis Kucinich saying it. Maybe a light will go on for you.

"Plus...... it's hard to imagine anyone walking away from the Cradle of Civiliztion, now pounded into dust, and saying "We won!""

Which is why no one on the right is advocating just walking away.

I want us out. Right now. The canard that "it will be worse if we leave" is hard to swallow.

To which I give you more of your favorite world leader (who doesn't matter).

Realizing this vision will be difficult, but it is achievable. Our military commanders believe we can succeed. Our diplomats believe we can succeed. And for the safety of future generations of Americans, we must succeed.

If we were to be driven out of Iraq, extremists of all strains would be emboldened. Al Qaeda could gain new recruits and new sanctuaries. Iran would benefit from the chaos and would be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region. Extremists could control a key part of the global energy supply. Iraq could face a humanitarian nightmare. Democracy movements would be violently reversed. We would leave our children to face a far more dangerous world. And as we saw on September the 11th, 2001, those dangers can reach our cities and kill our people.

So, y'know, that sounds worse right? Oh, I know I know, that guy doesn't matter. Let's try someone else. How about Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who recently sat down for a Q&A session with World Politics Review. He said.

"There is an election campaign underway in the USA. The politicians want to bring home the troops. But what happens then? The entire region will suffer as consequence. Shia and Sunni will be fighting one another everywhere. There are Shia in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, in the United Arab Emirates, in Syria, Lebanon - everywhere. This would have a direct effect on the oil market. Europe would be the first to feel the repercussions, soon thereafter the USA as well. The future of Iraq is directly linked to the security of the West. Politicians are fixated on their domestic clientele. But I would like to see the politician who would cold-bloodedly accept that Iraq becomes a staging area for al-Qaida.

Well gee golly, this person, who is not George Bush and in a position to know, ALSO believes an American pullout would lead to very bad things for Iraq and the West. So bad in fact, that he really doesn't believe we could be that "cold blooded".

But you want us out, "right now", and I'll bet this guy just made your People-who-don't-matter list as well.

So unfortunately he's wrong about how cold blooded we, well you, can be.

I'm not sure why any of us are talking about leaving anyway: we're not leaving. We're staying. Tens of thousands of soldiers. Tens of thousands of contractors. Multiple permanent bases. The world's largest embassy. Billions and billions more dollars, paid for not by taxes and sacrifice, but by piling debt on our children's heads.

Instead, we continue down the dangerous road of accumulating a massive budget deficit, clinging to the bizarre right-wing doctrince that deficits are irrelevant.

Democrats have majorities in both houses of Congress, if they're passing right-wing budgets, that IS bizarre.

Returning to the notion that you can always solve budgetary challenges- such as funding a war- by cutting back on spending elsewhere in the budget is a delusion. Earmark spending isn't even close to what's been spent on Iraq. What's clear is that you can't cut taxes and start a major war without creating a massive deficit that poses a real future threat to economic prosperity.

Right. So not only would you have to cut earmarks, you'd have to cut discretionary spending too. Maybe even kill a few programs.

If the US housing slump does drag the economy into a recession- or if another terrorist attack occurs- the government will have little room to lower taxes without a major backlash from Wall Street and the currency markets. It's not going to be pretty.

You're confusing tax rates and interest rates.
And sorry to jerk you out of 1999-- there IS a business cycle, and we're headed into a recession. Followed by a recovery. Followed by a recession... Not even Commies could avoid the business cycle because they had to do business with capitalists. So long as people borrow against future earnings, there will be people who guess wrong.

And unless you're prepared to post a scan of your degree in statistics, please spare us your criticisms of the methodology.

[...] But, you say, "9/11 changed everything". Not really. History tells me that we're not all that exceptional.

Responding only to an attack is generally the right thing, with two provisos. First, you must not already be at war. Once at war, you must decide between strategic offense and strategic defense, tactical offense and tactical defense. If I recall correctly, there's a cogent discussion of this in Harry Summer's On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. Second, one may respond to attacks not only against oneself but also against an ally or even a third party, if the attack poses a danger. Counterarguments discussed below.

As to whether we are exceptional, I submit that the proper question is whether the times are exceptional. The answer is that every period is both like and different from previous periods, and we must discern the likes and differences. If you have the stamina and the intellectual fortitude, I strongly recommend The Shield of Achilles by Philip Bobbitt.

The gist of the question is the meaning of national sovereignty. Sovereignty requires legitimacy, and the sources and prerequisites of sovereignty have changed over the centuries, as Bobbitt shows. It has resided in the person of the sovereign, in the territorial integrity of the homeland and, as the twentieth century progressed, in the general welfare of the people.

See also Lee Harris's excellent discussion of "honorific states" at http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=031103A. Harris echoes one of Bobbitt's closing points: that in the present and the near future, non-state actors (NSAs) will play a large part in events and we will have to adapt the rules of sovereignty to deal with them. (The Shield of Achilles was essentially complete on 9/11/01.)

And we are at war with a collection of non-state actors: al-Qaeda, the Taliban, violent islamicists of many origins, and power-seeking or disaffected militants of many stripes and cloths, none of whom will wear uniforms, observe the Geneva Conventions, or even grant free passage to battlefield medics or morticians.

The same technology that has helped to lift the curse of "nasty, brutish and short" from life can be used to do harm to the civilization that made the technology possible. It was always thus: the same iron that made the plow can be beaten into a sword. And we face a new generation of swords and wielders.

Now, counterarguments:

Saddam Hussein did not attack us. Balderdash. He was in frequent violation of the conditions on which the First Gulf War was ended, including firing on American aircraft observing/enforcing the conditions of that treaty. The congressional authorization of war included a bill of particulars totaling twenty-two items.

Saddam Hussein did not have WMD. Essentially true, but irrelevant. He conducted an extensive campaign, well-chronicled in the press, to convince everyone that he did. Even his generals believed that he had them. And he had had them; we now know that they were destroyed to put him in compliance with our demands--but he insisted on acting like they were still there, perhaps to keep Iran scared.

In simple terms: if you point a fake gun at a cop and you get shot as a result, it's your own damn fault.

Saddam was not involved in 9/11. True but irrelevant. Nobody claims that he was. The 9/11 commission concluded that he had had frequent contacts with terrorist leaders, not that he was specifically involved with 9/11. Captured documents now back up that conclusion.

We had no business taking down the legitimate government of a sovereign state. Does an unrestrained sociopathic tyrant whose government rapes and kills by torture the very people for whom he is responsible, for fun, at the rate of thousands per year, deserve the protection of sovereignty? The eighteenth century answer was "yes." The twentieth century answer was "maybe." The twenty-first century answer will be determined by what we (and others) do, because international law is first of all case law.

montysano: I'm not sure why any of us are talking about leaving anyway: we're not leaving. We're staying. Tens of thousands of soldiers. Tens of thousands of contractors. Multiple permanent bases. The world's largest embassy. Billions and billions more dollars, paid for not by taxes and sacrifice, but by piling debt on our children's heads.

Everyone here is fine with that?

Speaking for myself:

You bet your sweet Aunt Sally's ass I am, for a couple of reasons:

1. We stay means giving Iraq a fighting chance to become something like a stable, secular democracy. Imagine if THAT idea catches on in the Middle East.

2. I have the satisfaction of knowing that George Bush - you know: stupid, brainless, can't-tie-his-own-shoelaces George W. Bush - outsmarted all you brilliant liberals. Yeah, it's petty, but I'm savoring the spectacle of liberals trying to explain away the fact that they've been utterly, completely, totally betrayed by their odious party leaders who have admitted that even they will keep us in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

The sound you just heard was you being turned into roadkill by the course of history.

TallDave: Can't we get some better trolls?

'Fraid not. See, if trolls had the intellect and cognitive abilities to be "better" trolls... They wouldn't be trolls at all.

The old saying is that "a conservative is a liberal who was mugged". It is more correct to say, "a conservative is a liberal who started taking his meds".

I'd like to take (waste?) a few moments dealing with some of the "facts" cited by montysano. They are - how to put this politely? - full of s***, and unfortunately one has to occasionally clean out the stable (as it were).

montysano: 1 million civilian Iraqis dead

As TallDave noted, not even the Lancet tried to make quite such a huge claim. According to a November 2006 report by the Congressional Research Service (1), there are wildly varying estimates of Iraqi casualties during OIF.

No authoritative source has released either an estimate of Iraqi civilians who have been wounded or an estimate of total Iraqi casualties (dead and wounded). Because these estimates are based on varying time periods and have been created using differing methodologies, readers should exercise caution when using these statistics and should look on them as guideposts rather than as statements of historical fact.

However, only the Lancet report got anywhere close to 1 million deaths. As the CRS noted:

“Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey,” increased the number of clusters surveyed from 33 to 47 clusters and reported an estimate of between 426,369 and 793,663 Iraqi civilian deaths
from violent causes since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This article, too, has
sparked some controversy. Robert Blendon, director of the Harvard Program on Public
Opinion and Health and Social Policy, defended the study in an interview with the New York Times, saying that interviewing urban dwellers chosen at random was “the best of what you can expect in a war zone.” However, Stephen Moore, a consultant for Gorton Moore International, objected more strongly to the methods used by the researchers, commenting in the Wall Street Journal that the Lancet article lacked some of the
hallmarks of good research: a small margin of error, a record of the demographics of respondents (so that one can be sure one has captured a fair representation of an entire
population), and a large number of cluster points.

The Brookings Institute, not exactly known as a bastion of Bush worship, made its own estimate (again cited by CRS):

... the Brookings Institution estimates that between May 2003 and August 31, 2006, 63,000 Iraqi civilians have died due to violence. [emphasis mine - dj505

Hmmm... Not quite close to 1 million, is it?

Let's think about this: OIF has been going on since March 2003, or about 55 months. CRS notes that the worst month for Iraqi civilian deaths was October 2006, when there were an estimated 3,709 Iraqi civilians killed. Even if every month was as bad as that, this would only give a total of about 204,000 deaths, less than a quarter of what montysano claims.

Dude, stop listening to the voices in your head! They are lying to you.

montysano: Greenspan admits Iraq was about oil, as deaths put at 1.2m

Quoting the UK Guardian is somewhat akin to citing Mother Jones, Salon, The National Enquirer, or CBS, and this case demonstrates why. According to JoAnne Allen of al-Reuters:

Clarifying a controversial comment in his new memoir, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he told the White House before the Iraq war that removing Saddam Hussein was "essential" to secure world oil supplies, according to an interview published on Monday.

Greenspan, who wrote in his memoir that "the Iraq War is largely about oil," said in a Washington Post interview that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House before the 2003 invasion with the case for why removing the then-Iraqi leader was important for the global economy. [emphasis mine - dj505] (2)

See, Greenspan thought that "war for oil" was actually a good idea. The man's not an idiot: he knows that the economic lifeblood of the world is oil, and that having one man (especially a dictator like Saddam) able to control much of it would be bad news not only for the United States but also for the rest of the world. This is common sense. However, please note what I highlighted: oil was NOT the Bush Administration's motive for getting rid of Saddam.

So, montysano, you can continue to shriek and gibber and wave your arms, but I'm laughing at you because the fact remains that we're in Iraq, we appear to be winning, and even your precious dem leaders aren't promising to get us out (for the time being, anyway).

Whoa, thanks for sharing your own unique brand of insanity with the rest of us ill-informed, unwashed rubes. It's truly breathtaking....

Sorry, Talldave, but Iraqbodycount.org deals in documented deaths. The Lancet and ORB studies attempt to extrapolate the true death count, since many/most deaths are not reported.

Dude, would you mind telling the rest of the class how the Lancet and ORB studies "attempt to extrapolate the true death count?"

To wit, here are some questions to ponder: If "many/most deaths are not reported," then how in tarnation can the Lancet and ORB boys know enough to make empirically valid claims of their own? Do they have ultra-secret sources from which they draw their stats? Do they have a direct land-line to Al Qaeda Central? Have they planted a bug underneath Dubya's desk in the Oval Office, so they can listen to all the real dirt being dished out? Have they planted a mole on General Petraeus' staff who relays all the actual death numbers by shortwave transmission? Do they have Cloaks of Invisibility, which allow them to enter every single household, morgue, hospital, not to mention avoid terrorist ambushes, to make a precise body count?

Shucks, if you can answer yes to all of the above questions...then you're clearly in orbit around Neptune.

As it is, you're welcome to talk all you want, but don't get huffy if folks with better grips on reality continue to believe you're an idiot...and say as much to your face.

To wit, here are some questions to ponder: If "many/most deaths are not reported," then how in tarnation can the Lancet and ORB boys know enough to make empirically valid claims of their own? Do they have ultra-secret sources from which they draw their stats? Do they have a direct land-line to Al Qaeda Central?

Umm.... I think they went out and polled Iraqi citizens:

The estimates, extrapolated from a sample of 1,461 adults around the country, were collected by a British polling agency, ORB, which asked a random selection of Iraqis how many people living in their household had died as a result of the violence rather than from natural causes.

It's generally accepted that a poll of 1,000 respondents returns a sampling error of 3%; a poll of 10,000 reduces the error to 1%.

So, again: 1M innocent people killed, $1T down the crapper, but we still believe that there's a "win", a "victory" to be had?

Does anyone else think it interesting that the Senate only approved $128 billion when Bush and Gates asked for $190 billion in funding for Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008? That's not exactly an insignificant difference. Why so many Senate Republicans supported the bill with that reduced figure is what surprises me a bit, but perhaps they didn't want to be seen opposing a war funding bill for obvious reason.

It doesn't work Montysanto. That method works for public opinion polling, because an opinion can't be false, and the effort is just finding a truly random and disparate sample. If an election poll gets too many people with two separate homes, for instance, then it will be skewed. That's what happened in a 1930s federal election poll, it was one of the first telephone polls at a time when only the fairly well off had a home telephone. It was not a random sample.

Diverse physical circumstances of the sample is one of the factors that ensure the margin of error is actually only +/- 3%. You can't "reverse engineer" it, and argue that if your sample is presumed to be +/- 3%, then you can extrapolate their factual circumstances out onto the entire population.

But as you can see,bringing logic and facts to the table with a liberal like montysano is a waste of time.

When a liberal quotes a document like the downing st. memo(unsigned,cut and paste typed document that nobody will stand behind,given to a reporter by some mysterious unnamed person.Can you say Rathergate)
as proof that President Bush had planned all along
to go to war with Iraq,the mental midget light automatically goes on.
It appears that montysano also thinks the translated conversation from last week also proves
this.If monty read the ACTUAL translation instead of the olberman version,then he should be asking
why Saddam wanted to take 1billion and his
WMD program with him.
Egypt verifies this along with the translation showing Bush talking about not wanting war,and having to be the one to deal with the toll of civilian and military deaths and the difficulties of carrying out a war in the middle east.
But 17 resolutions over 10 years was enough,and
action had to be taken according to democrats and
Republicans.
But cherry picking information to push your political agendas is all you liberals care about.
You scream and cry about how Bush got us into this "immoral" war totally revising Clinton,Gore,
Reid,Kerry, and the rest of your liberal heroes
that yelled and screamed about how dangerous Saddam was in the 90's,his ties to Al-Qeada,and the danger he posed with his Nuclear and WMD programs.
Then you vote to send our men and women
to Iraq,and when the going gets tough,you yell "Big dumb Bush tricked all of us super intelligent
democrats into voting for war".
According to the CIA,you liberal idiots didn't even have a solid written plan to deal with Al-Qeada and Bill Clinton never even issued a kill
order against Bin Laden.Hell,Bill gave up no less
than 8 chances to kill or capture the most wanted
terrorist in the world that had declared war on America and was blowing up embassy's,battleships and the first attack on the twin towers.

I guess Bill was to busy arranging all of those
streisand,Devito sleep overs and playing the sax on Letterman.

yea,right,Bush is the dumb one.

You liberals got us into Vietnam,then sell out
our soldiers and country by defunding the war you
started,resulting in the deaths of millions.

You stood by and watched the slaughter in Rwanda.
(must not have passed your global test)

You go to war in Kosovo(without UN approval,so
illegal according to the liberal global test)
Did Kosovo attack America?
Clinton must be a War Criminal Huh?
Clinton told America that over 100,000 had been
slaughtered before we went in.
Clinton lied,people died.
What a CHICKENHAWK!!
We watched our Soldiers dragged through the
streets of mogadisu because Clinton sent in a few
Rangers against thousands of aidid's men.

Yea,right,Bush is the dumb one.

Since you liberals voted to send our men and women to Afghanistan and Iraq you have done nothing but mouth off stupid conspiracy theories
like:
Bush did 9/11
(pull your head out of Rosie's a@#)
Bush blew up the levees in New Orleans
(pull your head out of spike lee's a%$)
Bush stole the 2000 election
(not according to the NYT,USAtoday,and sane
people)
Bush stole the 2004 election
(see above)
(no crying about stolen elections in 06 though)
Bush lied about war intel
(not according to the 9/11 commission)
Bush outed Plame
(Richard Armitage ring a bell)
Bush is spying on us with the NSA
(Then why do democrats keep approving this over
and over and over again)
Bush the warmonger has killed thousands of
innocent people
(no,our real enemy,the terrorist are killing
tens of thousands of people)
Bush tortures terrorist
(our intelligence agencies have gotten vital
information from terrorist that has saved
thousands of civilian and military lives,how
would you have gotten this information liberal?)
Bush is a dictator
(Both wars and legislation has gone through our
House and Senate,you must be thinking about
your hero Hugo or Castro)
Bush is Hitler
(if Bush was Hitler,liberals like montysano
would be dead)
Bush is in Haliburton's back pocket
(only 4% of Haliburton's contracts have been
no bid and Haliburton has been trying to sell
this division for years.)
(has Micheal Moore or Boxer sold their
Haliburton stock yet?)

HEY M0NTY,HOW'S THAT IMPEACHMENT GOING!!!
all these crimes by President Bush and the first
thing liberal heroes like Reid/Pelosi say is "no
impeachment"

yea,right,Bush is the dumb one

I could go on and on with the idiocy of morons
like montysano who quote bogus death counts and
use cut and paste propaganda to push their war on
Bush while the reality based community fights the
War on Terror,but I saw a quote in the democrats
letter to clear channel that floored me.

"Our troops are fighting and dying to bring to others the freedoms that many take for granted"

This does not specify Afghanistan so I take this
to include what our troops are fighting for in Iraq.

So montysano,we have 41 democrats signing on saying that we are fighting for "freedoms that many take for granted" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I thought we were fighting for oil in Iraq.
I thought you liberals said it was a big mistake
and our Soldiers were dying for nothing.
I thought the war was some big neocon conspiracy
to spread our imperialistic ways.

democrats switching positions on the war to help themselves politically.

"And unless you're prepared to post a scan of your degree in statistics, please spare us your criticisms of the methodology."

LOL! You wouldn't be saying that if you'd actually reading a serious statistician's critique of either this study or Lancet's earlier ice breaker. The only folks who use their numbers are politicos trying to fill in their paint-by-numbers pictures.

"The canard that "it will be worse if we leave" is hard to swallow."

No doubt. I notice that you didn't even try to make the case for your "canard." I thought worst case scenarios were the opposition's special strength! But then results aren't quite so easy to predict when you can't rely on hindsight are they? In this case, however, even the New York Times acknowledges a likely genocide. They're apparently willing to live with it like just so much collateral damage. If you are too, then you're in no position to be decrying the Iraqi death toll. When you want to bring the troops home now and claim the humanitarian high ground at the same time, the truth is going to be a bitter pill.

"Also, folks: you do know that the Shiites are in control in Iraq, Shiites predominae in Iran, and that Al Qaeda is Sunni? Just how do you see this Al Qaeda coup in Iraq as possible?"

It's amazing how fast that crystal ball just clouds right over, even when we've got plenty of hindsight to work with here. Just for starters, I can see AQI tripping the wires on sectarian violence -- just like they did in 2006 -- can't you? The only person I know who couldn't tell you the difference between Shia & Sunni was the incoming Democratic Chairman of House Intel. If you think that simplistic divide tells you what you need to know, no wonder you have a hard time imaging what will fill the void on our retreat. For some ethnic basics, I recommend Dave Kilcullen's piece over at Small Wars Journal:

Actually, Baxter, some of them DID cry about that election-like noted far-leftist Greg Palast, who was so sure the 2006 election would be stolen that he let his story about it run before the election even took place:

Hi Monty - perhaps this will help. Iraq has been turned into a giant sucking killing machine for Saudi rejects, Syrian Minions, wanna be Jihadis, the Mahdi Army (v1.0 - to the current v6.0) and the always dying, disappearing, defecting Revo Guards. Yessir, the Great Satan is killing them off by the truckload - leaving them on the side of the road for a stranger to bury. SWEEEEEEET!

Syria and Iran are losing it - they have nothing to show for investing their cash, resources and volunteers into Iraq - no caliphate or theocracy any where in Iraq and - no super Iranian leaning Shia majority in the gove either. Can you say 'quagmire'?

Pushing the democracy train into Afghanistan and Iraq were not good options - only bad ones after every alternative has failedd. Consensual government in the ME is the one thing that may free the ME from intolerant militias, gender apartheid, honor killings, Presidents for life, Supreme Leaders, Lions of Syria and corrupt royalty in Ray Bans.

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About

Captain Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather. He lives with his wife Marcia, also known as the First Mate, their two dogs, and frequently watch their granddaughter Kayla, whom Captain Ed calls The Little Admiral.

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